Gypsy
by ebonbird
Summary: A pre Xfiles story. Dana skips school and her older sister, Melissa, leaves home.
1. And it all comes down to you

Summary: A pre X-files story. Dana skips school and her older sister, Melissa, leaves home.  
Rating: PG-13 for controversial concepts.  
Disclaimer: Dana Scully, Melissa Scully, Maggie Scully belong to Chris Carter, 1013 productions and some other big corporation. They are used without permission. Father Winslow and Mrs. Haggerty belong to me. Quotes are used without permission and are from Stevie Nicks' "Gypsy".  
Author's Notes: If you're looking for Fox Mulder, he no here.  
Thanks: To BeckyD for the edit. To 'Neeth for love and grace in the midst of our clashing beliefs.

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"And it all comes down to you,  
Well, you know that it does."

1.

9:30 in the A.M.  
Tuesday, during the last week of school.

Dana sneaked a pull at the bottom edge of her-- no, Missy's-- tube top. It did no good. The exposed skin was just as hot and sticky as that still covered by the elastic-gathered fabric.

Still, she felt pretty-- and exposed-- as she walked down Main Street, very much aware of the sweat-prickle of her scant thighs in her on-Missy-tight denim jeans, the hard heat beating down on her too orange hair and the tops of her sneakered feet, and the bleached concrete burning through her rubber soles.

Missy always said if you acted like you belonged in a certain place, then people treated you like you belonged in that certain place. But Missy looked like she belonged to the world, like a regular gypsy. Dana just hoped that philosophy also worked if you were a fifteen-year old midget.

She brought a freckled arm to shield her eyes, and looked around her, her feathered hair floating across her face. The tips brushed her slouching shoulders, doing a drag and stick. Her reflection wavered past a glassed-in collection of television screens. If she squinted just right, she looked like Missy.

Dana stopped at the street-corner and waited for the light to change. It did.

She crossed the street, made her way to the bench at the bus stop. She sat, folded her arms over her chest, squinted against the bright afternoon sun.

And waited.

That was when Melissa Scully spotted her. Only to her eyes, the teenager at the bus-stop looked too grim to be Dana. But when the girl dropped her gaze from the bus, shifted her feet, and settled her arms behind her, Melissa knew this was, in fact, her sister.

The tall Scully girl briefly considered stepping back into the store. Neither she nor Dana had any business downtown at this time of day. And if Dana, baby that she was, spotted her, she might go running to dad and tell him that she'd heard Missy was out downtown at noon.

Which didn't explain why Dana herself was downtown playing dress-up in Melissa's clothes.

Dana never saw Missy waving at her from across the street. Before stepping on the bus, she reached into her back-pocket and pulled out her rainbow wallet. The driver's license was still in there. Dana sighed. If only she'd really been old enough to drive, then she would not have had to skip school at all.

Confessionals always made her feel dizzy. Something about the closeness of the clean dark wood, the strange smell-less smell. She did not like this glorified closet. It was too narrow, too dark, and her knees slipped on the green covered kneeler even as her elbows dug into the arm rest for purchase. Part of her couldn't help wondering, why was it necessary for her to speak to God through a holy-man in box when God was supposedly in her heart, anyway?

The girl bent her head to her closed fists. Despite the discomfort and the mystery, this was familiar and she was scared and hurting and alone with her thoughts and now more than ever, she needed some semblance of home.

If she stayed too long in confession she'd sprain her back. Discomfort mixed in with your religion, anyone? A bit of remembered conversation around the dinner table wafted back to her: There's got to be something a little bit wrong with a religion that says discomfort equals holiness. She wriggled some more, acknowledging, yet again, that yoga definitely had some points over what her sister called the oldest of tax-exempt faiths.

She felt, rather than heard, the barrier slide open. Though she did not want to, she tried her hardest to see which priest was behind the screen.

So busy was she making out borders of purple draped on black over little bits of white she missed the priest's first words.

"Bless me, Father," she blurted, in her haste she forgot to disguise her voice as planned. "For I have sinned, it has been, it has been..."

She could not remember the words. What was she supposed to say next? She breathed in and out rapidly. She should leave. She did not belong here anymore...

"What is it, child? Take your time." 

Not likely, she thought as her knee slid off the kneeler. She braced her toe against the slick linoleum, catching the rubber sole firm on the ground. A dull pulse of pain throbbed through her insides. She really was supposed to be resting.

"I-I have a friend." It's only a little lie, please, God. "She, she was doing--" She stopped, out of breath. Why was this so hard? It probably wasn't anything Father Winslow hadn't heard before. She tried again, "she was having..." Why was this so hard? "Carnal relations with her boyfriend."

There. Done. Rip out the screen and tell me I'm damned to hell forever, but wait, Father, it gets worse!

There was a rustle as the father shifted in his seat. The priest sighed. His voice was soft and warm, and wise. "My child, what does this friend have to do with you?" 

Hot tears stained the arm rest. She rubbed at them with her arms, "I helped her. I helped her...I helped her go to the clinic..."

"What clinic?" he asked.

She told him everything she'd already decided to, and added five Hail Mary's and two Acts of Contrition for the first lie when it came time to say her penance, hoping that in the long run, it would be enough. 

"Dana," Melissa's voice was low and smooth, calm even, as she spoke through the green painted slats beneath the porch. "Dana, I know you're in there."

Dana clenched her arm across her stomach harder. Her face crumpled with the effort not to cry.

"Day-na," Missy coaxed, hooking her slim, perfectly groomed fingers between the slats of the porch. A slight frown wrinkled her brow. She'd thought Dana had given up hiding places.

"Just go away," Dana said in a rush, just before throwing a clod of dirt hard against the barrier between them. Missy let go immediately, biting back a squeal of rage as punctuations of dirt showered her.

"Leave me the hell alone!" Dana cried, and threw something else at the planks separating her from her sister.

Dana cursing? "Oh, Mother," Missy breathed, not knowing what to imagine. "What happened today?"

"None of your business." 

"Did you skip school?"

Silence from Dana and just the slow ticking of some bug-- thing in the clump of tall grasses by the road. "I saw you by the bus-- stop today..." 

"So why'd you ask me if I skipped school?" 

Patience fraying, Melissa tapped at a board, "You better tell me. Whatever it is, looks like I'm gonna be in trouble for it." 

"What?"

"Bill says Mrs. Haggerty called mom this afternoon. About me. Says she saw me taking the number 28 off of Main Street today. You know, the number twenty-eight that lets off three blocks from the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Norlight?"

In the darkness Dana went violently pale. "You wanna come inside?" she asked softly.

"Underneath the porch?!" Melissa said, running her hand down her eyelet skirt.

"I'm not coming out. And it's clean. Mostly." 

Melissa Scully thought about it for a moment. "Sure. Hold on."

A few seconds later Missy was pushing aside the loose slat and began to make her way into the cool, dark space. 

She came in on her haunches, her right hand fisted into the ground for balance as she waddled over. Dana's large blue gaze watching coldly as all her sister's gypsy grace disappeared. Missy wasn't one for crawling around in secret places. She was at her best in the wide open; running, swimming, and especially when whirling around in a field, peasant skirts unfurling wide across her Barbie legs, long hair gleaming in slow drifts around her ecstatic face. On all fours, she looked like a retard.

"Mom thinks I went to Planned Parenthood." Melissa said when she could make out her sister in the gloom.

Dana nodded.

"How come?" 

"I needed to talk to them."

"You did, hunh?" Melissa wished for a smoke. "You wanna tell me why?" 

"I took your driver's license so they'd think I was old enough," Dana blurted.

"Old enough for what?" 

Dana was stubbornly silent. The sprinkler went on with a hiss. Melissa imagined the golden object click whizzing a languid jet of water in sweeping arcs across the lawn.

"Old enough for what, Dana?" Missy asked again, kneeling before her sister her eyes searching desperately for signs of anything in Dana's dark-and-light striped face.

"Can you hold me?" 

The last time Melissa had tried to hug Dana, on her last birthday, she'd endured the touch for only a few seconds before pushing her older sister away.

"Sure," Melissa said reaching forward to pull Dana close to her. "Sure."


	2. She is dancing away from me now

2.

"She is dancing away from me now."

Grounded. At eighteen. If she wasn't supposed to be lolling on her bed like a limp lily she would have raised hell. As it was, mom had stuffed her full of soup and sent her up to bed and now she was looking after Dana.   
"Mom asked for you." Missy said kneeling by Dana's bed. 

"What'd you tell her?" Dana said through chapped lips, more than a little fearfully.

"That you were tired, and angry and weren't ready to talk right now."

"And?" 

"She bought it," Missy pushed back a length of copper curl from Dana's moist face. She was pale, white white white, and her eyelids were tinged a perfect shade of violet. Too bad about the cobalt crescents beneath her eyes... "D'you have any medicine you're supposed to take?"

"Um, yeah. The antibiotics and muscle relaxants are in my sock drawer."

Missy rolled her eyes at the familiarity with which the words rolled off Dana's tongue. With a sudden motion, Dana started to sit up stopped part-way and winced. "Ow."

"Oh, Mother," Missy reached out to steady her. "I'm sorry, Day, I shoulda told you, you don't wanna move around too much."

Dana let Missy push her back down against the sheet. "How do you know?" 

The older girl gave a noncommittal half shrug, "I know some people who've gone through this before. I'll get the pills. Case mom asks, the story is we're both feeling a little sick, okay?" 

Dana nodded. Then closed her eyes. With her arms folded across her stomach, and her penny-pretty hair curling around her face, she looked like a little baby-doll. So pretty, Melissa thought, only this baby-doll punched you if you tried to dress her up. 

Baby-doll, Melissa thought, and her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Baby. She swallowed the glob of phlegm that rose up in her throat and spoke again, "But you caught it from helping out at Sunday school, and I'm not okay because...Dana, are you listening?"

Dana's violent tinged eyelids fluttered open, "...sure..."

"Don't say a word, okay?" 

"Easy as pie, bye-the-bye," she murmured. "Can I go to sleep now?"

"In a minute. I gotta get your pills." Missy rose from her kneeling position. "And I'm thinking." And I'm not as smart as you, not by a long-shot so, "Gimme a minute", gonna-be-a-doctor Day-na Kate Scully, outta-my-way-jerk Day-na Kate Scully, kick-the-boys-and-make-em cry Day-na Kate Scully.

Missy couldn't help smiling around the ache in her chest. In her heart of hearts Dana had so many names, all of them true, and she was Missy's favorite, though Missy tried to hide it.

Dana was smart, the smartest of them all. That was good. Smart enough how to figure out how to...handle this without anyone being the wiser. And if Mrs. Haggerty, Mother-bless-her-anyway, hadn't got a bug up her butt over PP Dana would'a pulled it off, too. Cow.

Dana looked much better than she had beneath the porch, until she opened her eyes again. Their blue had nothing to do with color, and it scared Missy. "One question. You're the one who wants to be a doctor, what were you doing hiding out under the porch?"

Dana shrugged. "I wasn't thinking."

Melissa's eyebrow rose stratospherically. Dana not thinking? "Or maybe you wanted to get sick and die?" Missy looked down at her, brushed her fingers down her face. "It's cold down there, and wet, and you've..." 

"I killed my baby, Missy."

"Don't say that."

"But I did. If the Pope found out, he'd, he'd excommunicate me." If possible, Dana crumpled further upon herself, diminishing right before Missy's eyes.

"Dana, stop it."

"I'm a murderer, Missy. Maybe I deserve to die."

Melissa bit her lip.

"You think I did wrong, don't you? You think I'm selfish?"

"Will you be quiet? You're supposed to be sleeping!" Then in a much softer tone of voice, "Do you want everyone to know what's going on?"

"No," she muttered. "But you do think I'm selfish?"

Melissa sat down on the corner of the bed, wrapped her fingers around one of Dana's blanket covered ankles. "Do you really want to know what I think?" she began carefully. Even, she added silently, if I am an air-head? 

"...Yes."

"I believe, I think, that souls come and go, like on a wheel, and that your baby's soul, will come again, into another life."

Dana considered the idea. It was very reassuring, but that didn't mean it was true. And it didn't fit all the facts, such as Dana believed they fit together. "What's your proof?" she asked.

Melissa hugged Dana tight around the shoulders, careful not to jar the younger girl, "What's proof? I know it, I know it inside." She placed her hand against her own stomach. "And I see it in your face. You're not selfish. And you're not a murderer. I just know."

"It sounds like make-believe."

"And the turning of bread and wine into human flesh and blood doesn't?"

Dana squirmed, "Mom wouldn't like to hear this."

"No, she wouldn't it. Like to hear it," neither do you, "But how're you feeling?"

"I'm okay."

"Good." Melissa said, wafting a kiss past Dana's brow-line and rose to her feet.

Dana watched as Melissa went to their closet and began pulling out clothes and draping them on the bed.

"But I'm never going to church again," Dana said after a while.

"I don't think that's going to go over too well with the folks. It's bad enough I don't know where the cross mom gave is anymore."

"I don't belong there," Dana mouthed into the darkness. Her words were lost in the sounds of clothes rustling and of hangers clicking against each other.

"What are you doing?" Dana asked, eyes droopy.

"Packing."

After a while Dana spoke again, "Why?"

"You can't expect Maggie Scully to have a pagan and an infanticide--" 

Missy closed her eyes in agony, crumpling the pants she held to her chest. "Dana, I-- I--"

"You don't believe we only get one life to live?"

"Dana, does it matter?"

"Mrs. Haggerty thinks so."

"Mrs. Haggerty would like it if everyone had the same lousy options to pick from in life that she had."

"Father Winslow believes it."

"Father Winslow doesn't believe a lot of things," Missy said darkly.

"But I lied in there, Melissa. And now he thinks I was covering for you." 

"It's not important."

"Isn't the truth always important?"

"Dana, listen to me. It's over. The baby, if it was a baby, is gone, and mom's going to think what she wants to think, and dad's going to think what he wants to think, and Mrs. Haggerty gets more support to close down the clinic..." 

"But it's murder just the same."

"The church is wrong, Dana. I know it. I believe it."

"'Wishing don't make it so.'"

"You're wrong, Day-na. You're wrong. Faith moves mountains. It raises the dead. Faith can make the rain fall over the driest dessert. I'll just...gonna have to wish strong enough for the both us."

"What do you mean?" 

"I skipped school and took the bus to the free clinic. You tried to stop me from going and I made you come with me because I didn't want you to go home and tell mom what I was doing." 

"Missy, no!"

"Are you crazy?! Missy, yes. You still need mom and dad. In think this is just the excuse we all've been looking for."

Melissa turned under the covers to face the door when she heard a familiar tread outside her bedroom. The door opened a little bit: "Melissa, are you awake?" The question held no gentleness, no consideration for the possibility that the person inquired after might need rest, succor, compassion.

"Yes, mom." 

"Your father wants to speak to you now..."

"Can I have a minute, mom?" she said sleepily, already slipping into her role.

Margaret Scully pulled the door shut with a soft bang.

Dana flinched. The sisters looked at each other. "It'll be all right, Dana." Missy rolled out of bed and onto the floor, fully dressed. She'd been mulling over what she would say and why when her father finally called her down for the interrogation/trial. 

"MISSY," came their mother's voice from downstairs. 

"What are you going to do?" Dana asked.

"They think it was me. Let them think it was me." Melissa smiled. "It's time for me to leave anyway. Whatever happens, I don't blame you. Do you understand?"

Dana nodded. "Thank you, Missy."

"Okay, remember, you know nothing. Here we go," she said and she smiled.

Somehow, when she smiled the room brightened, her goldish hair shedding light around her face and shoulders. Missy had such wise eyes, such strange sad lonely eyes, but beautiful, and Dana couldn't begrudge her that beauty.

"Love ya', sport," said Melissa Scully as she grasped the door knob. Dana would always remember how perfect she looked, in the white trimmed halter shirt they'd fought over that morning, long arms banded with woven thread, turquoise butterfly earrings studding her ears. On her, even the freckles were perfect, sexy, even, speckling up her arm and across her breastbone, climbing over her shoulders and dotting the clean line of her collarbones. Her pretty breasts swung braless beneath the bunched fabric of her shirt as she moved with dancer's grace and pulled open the white door. 

-0-

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If you've made it this far, please let me know what you think.

Author's Notes: Hey there. First of all, I mean no offense. I imagine I'm stepping on a lot of toes here and I want to go on record (online alias that I am) and state that I wish to cause no pain. That said, this story was inspired in part by Scully's absolute resistance to speak with a clergyman when she was dying (US Season 4, Gethsemane). I immediately thought, what would inspire Scully, who has been known to go to confession irregularly, get a little upset at having a family priest show up at a little party at her house?

And suddenly, I saw Maggie Scully hissing at Missy for corrupting Dana and dragging her down to a free-clinic and exposing her to all sorts of 'filthy' things. And I thought about Scully's walls, and her silence and the strange tension and slight contempt that Maggie Scully seemed to have for Melissa (US Season 1: One Breath). But the actual writing happened on a day whenm, for some strange reason the Fleetwood Mac classic "Gypsy" floated, into my head, and all of a sudden it was a hot sticky day in 1978 (or the very early 80s), and Scully, then Dana, was skipping school even though she was bound and determined to be a doctor. I could see Missy, spinning like a top, like Mike Stipe's sister in the REM video for the song, "The One I Love," only spinning alone and the melody for the song "Gypsy," which to me was mindful of love and admiration, and envy and yearning.

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